Nameless
by thedorkygirl
Summary: Three unknown Xchildren whose lives found meaning.
1. The Blazing Glory

Nameless:   
The Blazing Glory

_Author_: Keren Ziv _  
Disclaimer_: I don't own DA _  
Rating_: PG, because it's not G _  
Category_: It isn't any shipper story _  
Author's Note_: This is the first in a series

My story is a simple one. I was born, I lived, and I died, all the while remaining content with my place in the world. I suppose it is all that is in between that catches the real essence of my life. The question is, was my life worth living? And if it was, does that make it worth telling?

When I would wake, my eyes would stay closed as long as possible, as if I had some unconscious desire to keep the world at bay those few extra seconds. I would slowly rise out of bed and methodically begin to dress for the morning and the beginning of a new day.

Likewise, when I lay my head down at night, I would close my eyes immediately, silently begging for a sleep which would not come for many hours. I would listen as, slowly, one by one, all of my siblings would fall into a slumber marked by easy, rhythmic breathing. their peace at night comforted me when I would recall the tortures of their waking.

It was a day like so many others that changed my life so drastically that I feel it is worth telling you. I want to remind you here that I was happy. I woke, dressed, and ate. Then I began my exercises along with the rest of my group. We worked well; quickly and efficiently, we went through vigorous routines. Finally, we were presented with the day's objective and the goal that we were to reach. We fell into the familiarity and simplicity of it all. I led the group through the mock mission with everything I had given the day before and nothing more or less.

As always, I watched them, making personal assessments of their abilities and weaknesses. In my mind, I filed away information on each of them: which was a bit sluggish today and would be sent to sleep earlier; who it was that went forward that half-second too soon; which one worked exemplarily; and such other things as I had done every day beforehand.

After dinner and showers, we filled into our lines and began our march back to the barracks which we were occupying. Our footsteps echoed with a reverberating pulse as we walked; our eyes swept the shadows, discerning in them from where the light was cast.

I was settling down, my barrack door closed, and listening through the walls and down the hall to the sound of my brothers and sisters and their various nighttime sighs and murmurs when a bright flash and the loud noise of the door locking suddenly jarred me from sleep. I turned on my side.

The first thing I realized about it was the terrible heat which I felt. I could feel it almost immediately. The second thing I realized was the fact that the air was filled with screams. It wasn't filled with frantic cries and screeching; the screams were one, long trill and tone, almost all of them together. I stood and walked to my door.

There were flames outside the barrack doors. I could see them creeping down the hall and suddenly I understood why my kind was screaming. They were being burned alive. I tried the handle of the door and remembered it was locked; remembered that it had locked seconds before I had heard the screams.

They were killing us. I suppose I will have to tell you that the time I realized that they were killing us had already killed some, by the absence of some screams was the first time in my life that I was truly unhappy. I wasn't just discontented, though, I was confused. Why would they do it? Was I mistaken?

I closed my eyes and tried the door handle again, even though I knew that it was a futile attempt. I could see my siblings slamming their bodies against the doors, racing towards the clear plastic and ramming it, their faces bloody, and I knew fear for them.

Why? The fire was working its way stealthily towards me. I could see the flames licking at the doors of a barrack not four down from me and I could smell the scent of burning flesh and hair; I could smell the scent and I could taste it on my tongue. I tried the handle.

Why? I stared at the door across from my own barrack into the eyes of my sister. They were wide with fear and I knew that she was crying. I did not want to see her crying and I tried to reach out towards her, through the glass and any other distance between us, and comfort her, but I was blocked by the cruelties of my makers.

Why? I could hear the panicked screams of my siblings as the fire drew nearer and nearer to them. Suddenly, the doors all swung slowly open. Out of the barracks scrambled tens of children, up and down the corridor. They looked toward the western end of the corridor and saw the blaze. They looked towards the eastern end of the corridor and saw the empty wall that greeted them.

"Run through the fire," I commanded. They were not all my siblings under me, but I trusted that the authority in my voice would make them follow my directions. "Now! Are you soldiers or are you babies?"

I glanced up towards the security camera in the corner of the hallway and silently cursed. The red light was blinking, showing that we were being filmed. They knew we were down here. Help us. You opened the doors, now turn on the sprinklers. Please.

One stepped forward, towards the fire. He was tall and I could see a prominent nose on his face. He looked down the corridor towards me and nodded, then hurled himself through the fire.

"Now, before it is too late!" I told them. They raced forward, going in threes and fours at a time, wrist holding wrist, their faces clouded with fear. I realized that they were children children as I was and that we did not deserve this.

It was a malfunction of the door systems, I told myself over and over. They let us out. Why isn't the sprinkler system activating in this corridor? Why do I have to send these children out through a wall of inferno?

They were almost all gone and I could see the fire was almost too much for me to make, but if I went immediately, I would be able to withstand the heat; maybe. I turned, scanning the corridor for anyone who I might of missed, when I saw her.

She was staring at the fire with her mouth open slightly, her eyes rimmed red from crying. It my sister, who I had wanted to help before. I realized that the fire terrified her. I took a step towards her, reached out, and touched her arm. She turned her dark green eyes towards me and blinked.

"I can't," she told me. "I'm afraid."

"You don't have to be afraid," I said, leaning towards her. "I will be right behind you. You have to go."

"You don't understand. I've had nightmares ever since that mission where we were to work in the burning building and the structure collapsed almost immediately after I exited it." Her face betrayed the horror that she was feeling.

I masked my face, my emotions. "You have to go. Do you understand me? Are you a soldier?" I coughed on the smoke

She nodded. "Yes, sir, I am." She too seemed to be choking in the air. I crouched lower towards the ground, below the settling smoke, and had her do the same.

"Then what in the world are you waiting for? Move it, soldier!" I barked, noticing how slight and thin she was. She would make it. She had to. I pushed her forward. "Do I have to carry you?"

"No, sir," she told me. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she raced forward. I knew that no matter how bad the heat was, she wouldn't scream. Not one of them had screamed, as there was hope in running and none in being trapped in a room. I wondered how many hadn't made it past the edge of fire.

There wasn't much time. I had to leave. I looked into the fire and suddenly realized that my fate was sealed. I couldn't make it. I couldn't even see a distant outline of the end of the corridor beyond the smoke and the flickering flames.

I was going to die. I knew that I wouldn't be the only casualty of the fire and I knew that I wouldn't be the last. I sat down slowly and crossed my legs. I waited calmly for the flames to claim me, for Manticore to win.

I didn't want them to win. No matter how much I had enjoyed my life, this was the thing that really counted. No matter how many little things had filled me with a sense of being, this one disastrous thing that they had whirled at us. It could not be forgiven.

I would be damned, though, if I were going to wait for them to take my life. I would go down swinging. I would go down in a fight that they would remember for years to come. I turned back towards the security camera and stared into it, bringing a mental image before my eyes of the director. She would remember me.

I turned towards the fire and ran, swiftly, into the flames. I didn't feel the heat, nor did I smell the burning of my hair and flesh. I only felt exhilaration.

I was wrong. I was the last death Manticore's fire claimed.


	2. The Liquid Triumph

Nameless:   
The Liquid Triumph

_Author_: Keren Ziv _  
Disclaimer_: I don't own DA _  
Rating_: PG, because it's not G _  
Category_: It isn't any shipper story _  
Author's Note_: This is the second in a series

I used to love to swim. Effortlessly racing through the water, my body moving through it as if I weighed nothing at all; everything about it sent shivers of joy through my body. I lived for chances to train with my brothers and sisters in the pools. I used to dream about the water, feeling the cool wetness against my skin and the droplets that would stay on my eyelashes when came to the surface. To say that the water was my life would be an understatement.

We used to train a lot underwater. We would have to stay underneath for a certain amount of time. It was simple for me to do, really simple, and I always came up with a glint in my eye that I'm sure the others saw. It was fun, to sit down there and imagine that I could stay there forever.

We would be chained. I remember that the first time I was chained underwater I was angry. I was quite young and I didn't comprehend the reasons they had for not letting me swim around the pool and play. I remember that I looked at the fear in my siblings' eyes and knew it wasn't mirrored in my own. I thought perhaps that I should be fearful, not furious, but I couldn't get the anger out.

We stayed down for only forty-eight seconds. I remember, afterward, going up to Colonel Lydecker and asking him why he had taken my pool time away. It was very wrong of me to do so, but he didn't punish me. He merely said that I had gotten extra pool time. He explained that the longer I held my breath, the longer I would get to stay in the pool.

I didn't get angry again. He had given me what I most wanted: time in the water. I would sit there with my brothers and sisters, at first as calm as they were; soon I ignored the relaxation techniques that we were instructed to employ and I would move a bit; back and forth, as much as the chain and the small pool allowed. I always came up last when they released the locks. I knew that once I hit the surface I would have to climb out and go to the barracks. The barracks didn't have a pool.

I was eight when it happened. The director, Renfro, began watching our sessions in the pool. At first, it was only while we were swimming, practicing our underwater vision and above water movements. We were observed while we divided the water into two with the swiftness of our arms.

Then she started watching us when we were chained to the bottom of the small pool. She would gaze at the stopwatches that the men held with her keen eyes and then glance at us in the pool. Soon, we were doing two and a half minutes instead of one and a half. I knew that because she was watching us we would have to get better.

We got better. Each day, we went a little longer. My brothers and sisters began to get frightened, often clawing upwards for released five or six seconds before they opened the locks that held the chains. I would watch them with impassionate eyes. Didn't they know how to take relax and slow down if you're running out of air?

We were down there for three minutes and twenty-six seconds before we were released. I remember counting the seconds out of boredom. We had already been down to the small pool, with its chains, and so a second trip to it in one day or even one week was something unusual and rather boring.

They released the chains and I waited a bit while the others raced towards the surface. I watched as they broke into the air and began my upward passage, only two or three seconds after them. However, I came to the end of my chain.

I looked up, startled. I was still chained, even though the others had been released. Was there some sort of problem with it? I swam down a bit and inspected the secure on my foot and noticed a manual lock. I looked to the surface and tried to convey the thought that I needed a key.

I saw her, the director, with her eyes fastened on a stopwatch. She took her eyes from it and I saw her gave me a cold glance. What about the girl? I saw her say. I could see the smile in her lips and I knew that I wouldn't be getting the key. We have to get her out. She's valuable weaponry.

I swam to the bottom and tried to remain composed. I knew that the calmer I was, the less oxygen that I needed. It was the common sense it was necessary for me to retain a hold of. I had to keep my priorities in sight. Get out of the water, take a deep breath, and keep silent. I tried the secure on my ankle.

At four minutes under water, I saw the Colonel walk into the room. It wasn't common for him to supervise training in the small pool, so I knew that he was here because I me. I felt powerful because he was, for the first time in my life, in my control.

He said something to her. His back was toward the surface of the water so that I couldn't see what he had spoken, but I saw the directors calm reply. Problem with the release mechanism, Colonel. We're working on it, loking for the key. Lydecker, look at these numbers. She's been under water for over four minutes now and she . . . the director turned.

I wondered if Renfro had fixed the 'release mechanism' herself or if she had one of her henchmen fix it. I doubted whether she had taken time out of her life to edit a slight code, or maybe hide a key, for one small child. Then again, she probably enjoyed being in control and liked the feeling of knowing she, personally, had done this.

It had to have been five minutes. My lungs were beginning to burn but I wouldn't give her the victory of seeing me snatch at the water in a desperate attempt for air. Let her see it in my eyes, I thought, let her see that I wont give up. I tugged at the chain again. Still fastened.

I wonder if she has a button to release me, something that she's rigged into the wiring of the computer so that she'll be able to make a slight movement with her hands and then watch with her melodramatic voice exclaiming that I've come free.

I see her murmur something to an aid. Six minutes. This is the longest that I've ever been down underwater and I can feel it start to get to me. I want to go up and take a large breath and water and maybe the Colonel wont mind if I glare daggers into the back of Madame Renfro as she saunters out of the room while I towel off. I closed my eyes, unwilling to let the want show through.

I felt it before I saw it. It was a slight disturbance in the water, a ripple, but I felt it all the same. I opened my eyes and watched as a small key came down. Inadvertently, I smiled, and eagerly palmed the key as it came close enough to reach me where I was sitting. I fitted it into the lock and released myself. I was in power.

I swam a bit towards the surface, glad to be released. I saw it in her eyes, though, saw her victory, and it hurt me. I didn't want it to be her victory. I didn't beg to be released. She shouldn't have won. It was my victory and she had taken it and made it pale. I looked at the key in my hand and dropped it, watching as it lazily made its way to the bottom.

Staring up into the eyes of my brothers and sisters, all huddled around the pool, I swam the path that the key took, never letter my gaze break. Settling myself comfortably on the bottom, I smiled up at Renfro before taking a deep breath.

Water was my life, but it was also my death.


	3. The Soaring Heights

Nameless: The Soaring Heights

_Author_: Keren Ziv_  
Disclaimer_: I don't own DA _  
Rating_: PG, because it's not G _  
Category_: It isn't any shipper story _  
Author's Note_: This is the third in a series

I liked heights. Mountaintops, trees, building roofs, it didn't matter what I was on, as long as it was up in the air and above the people. I think the first time I could remember climbing up to a spot was when I was about three. I could have been younger, I could have been older, but the point is that I climbed a shelf and lay, my body strung out, on my back and just _was_. I didn't need to work on anything and I didn't have anybody yelling at me. I think that with the serenity I found that day, I also found my first love.

That was more than fifteen years ago, my first high place, and I had many high places now that nobody knew about. They were my secret spots; places I went to unwind when I was feeling down and out; they were spots for me to be happy in, because I could not show happiness in any other place.

I think that _They_ knew it. I got a lot of assignments for me to travel to someplace with mountain ranges or cliffs or bridges near. I suppose I should have been thankful to them that they were granting me this small kindness. However, back then, I'm not at all sure that I knew how to be really thankful.

I got an assignment to go to California and, well, **_remove _**a businessman from his own lofty perch in the technology world. He had been working on something or the other that would give most of California electricity cheaper and let them have some relief from the government monopoly that had been made. Not that I cared very much.

It was a uncomplicated mission. It was trouble-free from the start. The man was drunk when I arrived, so stripping him down to his bright red briefs and tie was no problem. I walked him up to the top floor of his apartment building and let him admire the view of the city of Sacramento for a few minutes before gently prodding him over the ledge.

I was supposed to drive immediately back to the base in Washington State after I was finished with my mission. However, I had some extra time left over and I decided to take a small coastal excursion and see how the sea looks from a high perch on a cliff.

I stopped in a small town on the Oregon coast called Devil's Something-Or-The-Other. It was rather dingy looking, with buildings that seemed not to have been washed since the Pulse, but I wasn't there to see the buildings. I had seen some signs on the high way, boasting of their wonderful beaches and the houses you could rent that overlooked the sea from a cliff. It didn't matter that the signs looked to be twenty years old, because I didn't want to rent a summerhouse. I just wanted to be high above the sands.

I stopped my car in the parking lot as the signs directed me to. I saw that there seemed to be two sets of stairs, one leading up and one leading down, at the end of the lot. I walked slowly to them, smelling the air laced with salt. I went up the stairs quickly, jogging up them in my haste to see the sights. The stairs went upwards for a long while, several times stopping at a landing before continuing it's ascent.

Whatever houses had been there beforehand were no longer on the narrow stretch of land that I saw when I reached the landing. It was no matter to me, however, because I could see, just out beyond.

To be able to fly, I mused, and see these things without somebody searching for me to send me on to lunch or exercises. Just to be able to view the land below me without worry. I stepped forward, trying to take in the entire view.

There were rocks almost directly underneath the crumbling edge that was there. They looked thin and rather fragile. For half a second, I figured on testing them, but I decided against it. I could see something over the end of the rocks, though, and I scanned it a bit for a while before I was able to identify it. It was a house, or what was left of it. It had been dashed to pieces. So that was where the summer houses on the cliffs had gone.

I back up for a moment, suddenly breathless. I looked down on the sand and the waters and saw the reflection of the sun on them. It was almost dizzying up here. I went forward once more, determined to catch every drop of the view. I heard something move in the woods.

I made a move to turn and inspect the source of the noise. Without warning, the ground beneath me slipped away and for a frantic second I was flying downwards in a horrifying tumble. I reached out and frantically grabbed at whatever I was soaring past. Just barely, I managed to catch hold of the rocks.

I just needed to take hold with my other hand and then pull myself up. I glanced down below me and saw the houses that had fallen. I became paralyzed with fear. I closed my eyes, willing the images to flee my mind, but they were there all the same, haunting me. I needed to get the picture of the house out of my mind.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I reached my hand and tried to grab the edge of the stone. I could feel the centuries pass for each inch it rose. I just barely managed to touch my fingertips to it before the thought of the house entered my mind and I dropped it. As soon as my flesh touched the stone, I knew that I wouldn't be able to pull myself it. It wasn't a matter of ability. I wouldn't, mentally, be able to do it. I was ashamed of myself at that moment.

I heard something crinkle from above. My mind flashed to my bag and the communication devices that I had up there. I silently cursed myself for ever stopping here to view the sea from above. It would be the death of me. I had gotten weak, though, and perhaps I deserved it. I would be a second-rate soldier. As I thought of my bag up above me, it suddenly came to me that I hadn't brought my bag from the car.

Whose communication device had made that noise? I kept as quiet as I possibly could, straining to hear whatever was being said. At first, I heard nothing, and began to fear that I had imagined the entire thing. However, I finally heard a voice.

"I lost visual. Subject disappeared over the cliff's end. Permission to conduct a retrieval of remains, sir." The voice was filled lilt, yet it had a commanding tone to it. "I wont allow any more X-5s to become rogue, sir."

She had been following me because I was an X-5? I waited while she walked closer and closer to the end of the dirt, waited while I knew she would see me and call that in. She reached the edge and I had the sudden desire to hide myself. I had no way to be able to do it, though, so I kept still, my eyes on her.

I knew why she had been following me when she looked over. She was an X-5 herself. However . . . she hadn't been in 445's group when he had ordered them to leave. I had been caught almost immediately and returned to the barracks. I hadn't fought them in the least.

Yet they still didn't trust me. Ironic. I followed orders that night, from my CO. When I was told to stop by our keepers, I stopped. I had been reindoctorated, had been placed in a new group of X-5s, had followed any and all orders they had given me, and they still didn't trust me.

The girl blinked once, then twice. I saw her lips move in a silent curse word, then I saw her move a black box to her mouth.

"Subject is alive. Am going to get and return to home."

She was getting out ropes and tethers. I knew that she would soon lower herself down towards me and secure me, before scrambling back up the crumbling dirt and hauling me back in. What would I be going back to? I would be going back to a place that didn't trust me, a place that sent others to follow me after I completed my missions.

"I think you were mistaken about something," I said quietly. It is the first time I've spoken to her and I think she looked slightly surprised that I had the audacity to speak to her as she was preparing to save my six. I noticed how sturdily built she seemed to be: she was tall and her shoulders were well formed. She had short, chin-length hair that framed a face that betrayed nothing about her. She would blend into a crowd someday soon and sneak into a residential neighborhood and then into a house before finally removing her gun and killing an old Admiral because he had taken to speaking of an old project called Manticore or something-or-the-other. "You aren't going to be able to get me up there."

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh really?" she said. "I didn't notice anything to prevent me from helping you. What exactly is the problem?"

"I'm not going back to your home," I said quietly. I noticed how her lips twitched in amusement when I made this statement. I kept speaking. "I don't think I like it very much." I brought my body up doubled under me, my knees to my chin. I looked up at the sky and remembered all the times I had wished I could fly up into the heights and just observe from there and not be bothered.

Carefully, I let go of the rocks and plant life which I was holding and pushed off with my feet against the hard stone and caking dirt.

I was going home.


End file.
